In which the pond offers a triptych of reptile terrors for a lengthy meditative Sunday ...

The pond just wanted to express undiluted appreciation for the Caterist revival of "smarty-pants". 

It's a term that's fallen out of favour since it was all the rage in Tamworth primary school way back when. And what a clever variation it is on the usual talk of 'leets and virtue signalling and suchlike …

Talk about an elevated form of discourse… it's the sort of smug words that the reptiles should be using on their mugs, for their serve of 'leet Surry Hills coffee, from the best baristas in the known universe …

It reminded the pond of other great Tamworth debating points … get a great woolly Pioneer bus up ya, or ya drink ya barthwater Harvard smarty pants types …

But enough of pleasantries, because the pond was doing one of its famous bait and switch tricks. 

The pond really doesn't give a flying fuck what smartier pants than Harvard smarty pants from a lesser UK university Caterist scribbles, not when there are more pressing issues, first signalled early in the week by one of the craven Cravens …

Is there an irony in a servant of the whore of Babylon, nurturer of the Latin mass in the pond's lifetime, blathering about Australian culture? Well yes there is, all the more because 'Australian culture' is a meaningless morass of vague generalities and Cravenish nonsense …

But another Craven heard the clarion call, and so was out and about yesterday …

It is of course alarmist nonsense, but it seems to be part of the rampant nationalistic, jingoistic tripe that litters the lizard Oz these days, and so the pond plunged in …

They've never heard of Ben Chifley? Well if the ACU won't organise field trips to Gundagai, who can blame them?

By one of those ironies, the pond's house was originally owned by a steam engine driver … back when dinkum clean Oz coal was more than a reptile catch-cry.

But the pond digresses, as academics mourn the chance to make an easy living sitting on a chair, and calling it Australian culture … when they might be acquiring the Niagara cafe and turning it into a shrine for steak and eggs and Ben … (yes, it's for sale as is half the main street of Gundagai, so if Craven was really keen he could set up a temple for Australian culture in the 1929 Gundagai theatre). But enough of rural towns in decline, let's get back to the suffering of academics ...

His eyes mist at Banjo? Well, perhaps there's something to be said for banal versifying. Perhaps he sheds tears when he gets to reading 'Breaker' Morant's efforts, while marvelling at the sound white Australian policy enthusiastically endorsed by The Bulletin.

But again the pond digresses, because there's nothing more compelling than a man who thinks that Australian culture is embedded in academic pursuits, as opposed to say, doing actual shearing, as the pond's brother in law and uncle were wont to do …

But if we haven't been poncy enough already, how about dropping in a mention of Oxford, no less, old chap, and Balliol, wot wot, true indicators of Australian culture at its best ...

Yes, it's essentialism, masculinism, absurdly generalising. So what? After all, Australian culture all about absurd generalisations, it's why the reptiles are so dinkum. It's Australian culture horse's arse style, and back the front, a bit like Dave trying to please Dad, and that's the way it goes, and so what, and so it's on with the absurd generalising, because that's what makes Australian culture, like betting on which fly will reach the top of the window frame first … or perhaps a bantam strutting about boasting of his achievements, like the bantams used to do in the chook run we had down the back in Tamworth ...

Ah good old Patrick White and his deep love of Australian culture ...

(The Monthly here)

Never mind, on we go with more sanctimonious drivel ...

Say what? Here's the thing, the pond must be one of the few people in the world who actually finished Susan Sontag's few attempts at writing a novel …

 

It was just by chance that the pond was reading about Sontag the other week in The New Yorker, an article out of the paywall at time of writing here, which included these bon mots …

An experiment in unreadability? That's perhaps unkind, but more than fair, as was following talk of "a less universally appreciated work" ...

The pond still has nightmares about those novels, while appreciating Sontag's essays.

And there's the rub. There's a lot of crap in the world, in Australia and elsewhere, following Sturgeon's Law that ninety percent of everything is crap, and Peter Craven is as capable of crapping on as the worst of them …

Youffs can feel safe in their bed if they never read a Patterson poem or a Sontag novel, and that insight has got fuck all to do with Australian culture …

And so to the pond's other duties, and this being a meditative Sunday, it's a triple bunger. 

The pond makes no apologies. Most will drop like flies circling an outside dunny, but that's as it should be. First the pond must regurgitate a standard bout of dog botherer denialism …

Now the pond has already noted that the dog botherer got it wrong, in his usual completely clueless way, as reported in Media Watch,  so the pond wanted to run this and then stand back to watch the ABC swarm all over it, and send the dog botherer packing (or is the pond dreaming?)

Now what's the point here? Envy of the rich? An hostility to filthy rich Chairman Rupert? Mean-spirited boasting about how the dog botherer is doing his bit to fuck the planet, but if he was only richer or better at sports, he might have been able to fuck it even more?

Well all that perhaps, but more to the point, it's the sort of weird logic that "these people" are getting agitated about a hoax and a fraud, even as climate scientists go about observing the world, and the dog botherer fucks up what they're saying, because he's fucking clueless … 

So on with the complete cluelessness … and the explicit suggestion that nobody should do anything, or even talk about doing anything, because the dog botherer, in his usual way, will note that we should all be full steam ahead … using dinkum clean Oz coal of course, oi, oi, oi …

The one hope of surviving the rest of the guff is that the dog botherer will  use climate science to shift to his usual litany about what's wrong with the world, because whinging and whining and moaning is the way that he makes his living, stoking fear, anger and hate ...

Yep, thar she blows, and so because, in the dog botherer's world, we're dealing with a hoax and a fraud, everything becomes grist to his alarmist mill ...

It must be tremendously easy to be a fatuous fathead, and think it's all an imaginary hoax … and so be able to decry anybody attempting to do anything about it ...

Ah fucketty fuck, the usual blather about the globalist zeitgeist, but pause for a moment - is it that far from the parochial nationalist twittery emanating from a loon off at Balliol college in Oxford contemplating Australian culture?

Such are the wonders of the lizard Oz, with the dog botherer seemingly unaware that he's scribbling for a globalist internationalist corporate entity aiming to rip off as many countries as it can ...

Ah, snowed ….we've all been caught in the snow, thanks to the snow ploughers ...

Yes, we've all been snowed, time and again …

And so to the pond's final duty, poor old prattling Polonius, right down the list these days, because he's sounding weirder and weirder.

It will be recalled that Polonius has long had an obsession, not just with the ABC, but with pedophiles in the ABC … and so to yesterday's outing …

What's it really all about?

Well Polonius has long sought ways to distract and deflect discussion of pedophilia in the Catholic church, and the ABC has been a favourite piñata … 

The stayers can see how it's done, but be prepared for extensive time machine travel in the Polonial version of H. G. Wells ...

Now in terms of time travel, Polonius might just as well have gone back in his machine to decry the ABC reporting on the way that ancient Greeks liked to hitch up younger boys with older men to introduce them to the ways of the world …

But the real point is that you won't read a single thing about the Catholic church and its many cover-ups in Polonius's penetrating re-telling of this tale for the umpteenth time …except the injustice and the suffering of Catholic bishops ...

Dear sweet long absent lord, Ita fell into the Polonial trap, and engaged in correspondence with him, in a way designed to deflect and distract from other matters more recently in the public eye in relation to the Catholic church?

He'll never shut up now … he'll feel emboldened, Ita's his sort of woman, and the pond's only hope is that now the needle will jump from the groove, and Polonius will spin the platter and head off to talk of other matters ...

He did, he did, and it's both siderisms, this time deployed to redeem Donald Trump. Yes, in Polonius's world, you can't discuss Trump alone, you must deplore Clinton, Hawke, John F. Kennedy, and perhaps throw in Thomas Jefferson for fucking his slaves … 

Never mind, that right at the moment, without trawling all the way through that historical baggage, it's the Donald fucking the country …

Well that's torn it, Polonius only had to mention the Donald, and the pond could look outside his rant and run a few cartoons. 

Please rant a little more so we can see a few more cartoons ….

Oh fucketty fuck, more time machine stuff, as if we can't remember Polonius hanging around with that arch loon B. A. Santamaria … 

Please, a cartoon with a whiff on the front palate of a cheeky Donald, perhaps as a reminder of how the current situation came about …

And so to a final very short gobbet, in which Polonius assures us the controversy is still extant today … something only a mad uncle down from the attic for a moment could assure an indifferent world, unless of course they happen to be Peter Craven wanting to remember Australian culture ...

And so it's back to the cartoons, with a few historical allusions designed to appeal to Polonius …